Lol, ok, thx 4 claryfing that 
All that effort and this one sentence just rendered all your words meaningless.
I had strong reaction about its nerf as well, but after playing with it with 4 heads upgrade it still felt pretty decent. At the very least it is now much more balanced with other Conjurations. If Conjurations would not be played much, they would be buffed anyway, with and without my suggestions 
Very good post and suggestions!
I would just emphasize how pathetic the fire-burn build is. Burningâs benefit should be that it applies all this Burn DOT on top of regular damage. Cold chills and freezes in addition to regular damage, lightning has stun and/or extra crit in addition to decent damage, why does Fire get the cold shoulder here? All the spells should have overall similar effectiveness.
As a fire sorc from D2 since forever, I really, really wanted to make fire work in D4 this time around (it was utterly useless in the last beta as well). But it just wasnât possible.
Either make all Burn DOTs stack on top of each other, or make every fire skill cash immediately cash out all Burning damage currently on the target.
Also, Firewallâs damage definitely needs to be greatly increased. it is very difficult to get enemies to stand in a thin straight line for more than the second it takes for them to walk through it. Firewall should be doing reasonable damage even if they only walk through it. Maybe make its base form apply Burn that lasts for 4-6 seconds, so they take the full damage whether they stand in it or walk around?
As far as I saw, most burns do stack, but their issue is that damage is done over lengthy 8 seconds. I had a lot of situations where I stacked burn dot for all remaining health of enemies and still had to wait till they die or finish them off with other abilities, where as Lightning or even Frost build I have killed them much faster. That is why I suggested to shorten their length and make them deal more dps to compensate - that would reduce this gap. A key / Paragon passive or legendary power that would allow to unleash some percentage of stored burn damage immediately with some trigger like the Fireball upgrade does could help that regard as well.
Direct damage Fire builds felt decent - Fireball for large zone AoE, Meteor for single-target (since its area is quite small) and Inferno to pull enemies together and bombard with free mentioned spenders. Worked decently both against bosses (who burn a lot from Inferno) and regular enemies (who get pulled by Inferno to keep stacked and nuked).
On the contrary, almost all burning spells felt weak. Fire Bolt has too big part of its damage as burning and is a bad finisher. Incinerate is a bit better after the buff, but is stationary (which is quite risky, especially if enemies swarm you from all sides) and did not need the Mana cost increase and Firewall does too low damage - Meteor does only slightly less damage than total Firewall and much faster, plus Meteor with upgrade can immobilize hit enemies to stay inside the burning area. Firewall has an upgrade that makes enemies burn for 3 seconds after leaving it, but total damage done from that burn is not that impressive. So I agree, Firewall damage (if needed, with reduced duration to compensate) and / or its lingering burning upgrade duration could use a boost.
Have to take into consideration boss fights as well
Firewall melts them fast, they barely move, having up-time all the time⌠Same/similar to Hydra, they never miss big stuff
I mean just before the server expired killed Lament with Pyro sorc, felt like the easiest fight ever tbh
Think thereâs some space for later level upgrades and paragons regarding stuff like this, like DoT increase or maybe even Pierce resistance⌠Speaking of which pretty sure saw even gems giving DoT % increase to Weapons by socket alone
IN GENERAL itâs quite hard/tricky to make DoTs work without making them either OP or UP⌠IF they make DoTs stackable, thatâs super crazy OP, if they make them not stackable - itâs a mess tuning up/down the numbers
Sometimes I think there should be an affix that allows a lucky-hit to have a 2nd stack of DoTs for a while (say up to 3 sec or sth like that), or maybe Summons/Conjurations deal bonus % damage for a while⌠Stuff like that 
But again, we played barely a scratch⌠All kinds of things can happen later on higher levels, for ex. wanted to Enchant a Lege I got (change one stat) and realised it is actually possible but from later on (from a currency from Helltides)
That was my experience. I think itâs fine to have longer durations, but they need to increase the damage to compensate. Every time a burning creature is hit with a burn spell, they should take the sum total of remaining burn, and have the burn duration refreshed. This would increase the power of spells like Fire Bolt later in the game, because it travels so fast and can pierce burning creatures it could cash out other burn damages.
Agreed. It needs to do maybe 30-40% damage immediately, then 60-90% over time. Or 10% initially, then 40% initial damage to burning targets (so subsequent hits, or those standing in a firewall).
That wasnât my experience. It didnât do much to the bosses I used it on. Except for Ashava, where Firewall build was the most effective out of my fights.
Hopefully these issues will be fixable with Paragon points, because I didnât see any aspects that would address it.
Incinerate is still trash. All three of its nodes are trash too.
Fireball needs a visual update. It barely looks better than fire bolt.
2 Likes
I doubt that they would allow previous burn expire and unleash immediately when it is reapplied, since usually Blizzard implements burning as stacking and refreshable DoT - when new burning is applied, remaining damage from previous burning gets added to new and the sum is distributed over its duration. That could have an issue of likely never unleashing all stored damage, since burning builds would constantly refresh burning and whenever enemy dies, it would likely still have most burning damage in store and wasted. Iâm not 100% sure that burning in D4 works similar way, but from what I saw, stacking burning extended the DoT covered health bar of enemies and did not intensify the burning very much, so most likely this is the principle.
The two most effective ways to combat that are to reduce duration of burning (with damage per second increased to compensate) or to give mechanics that allow to unleash part of stored damage immediately like Fireballâs upgrade. That is why I suggested to implement either or both solutions to help burning builds.
I am curious to what which of the 3 elemental lines you think that is best off without too many issues.
Most universal I think is Lightning. Spark is a decent basic attack for both ST and AoE situations and Chain Lightning is as well even after the nerfs. People who enjoy melee combat can decently utilize Arc Lightning, especially if they take Vyrâs Mastery key passive.
Fire crit build is pretty universal as well - Fireball for AoE, Meteor for single-target, Inferno to burn bosses and group up enemies for free Fireballs / Meteors and so on. Firewall is quite universal as well.
Frost is good against regular enemies, but has issues against bosses, as most their passives / upgrade effects work only during staggered phases.
Fire burning builds can be good against bosses, but have much slower pace against regular enemies than Frost / Lightning.
1 Like
I fully expect burn damage to be nerfed significantly. With Hydra and Fire Wall nothing gets close to you without suffering over 75% hp loss, the usual mobs die before even crossing said fire wall.
you missing out a lot of potential builds for staggering bosses. Rogue and Sorc are probably the best classes to stagger bosses. And if you watched wudijo, you would know how to stagger bosses a lot faster then you think.
Sorc and Rogue are also the most bursty classes as well if specced right, so perfect to utilize the stagger state the most.
I planning on a lightning build that is tailored to the stagger window, and if im correct, this will be one of the best sorc builds in the game
What builder would a fire crit build want to use? Firebolt seems ill suited.
This wasnât a huge issue on bosses without timers as the majority of your damage used to come from Frost Blading during periods when the boss was vulnerable as you could throw out like nearly as many Frost Blades as you had mp to cast them. So youâd have 3-5 Frost Blades out attacking the boss.
And your survivability came from being able to gain a barrier and the very useful damage immunity you got from the Ult.
But Frost Blades were nerfed and barrier generation was nerfed. So killing bosses is gonna take a long time now.
Maybe Spark. It is versatile, has good compatibility with crit builds and one of its upgrades gives critical strike chance. I did not test that deep, but from the wording it seems to provide general crit chance increase and not only for Lightning spells, so should affect Fire spells as well and seems fitting.
However, there should be a compatible Fire spammable spell as well, that is why I suggested to more evenly redistribute damage of Firebolt to make it more compatible with Fire crit builds and make one of its upgrades suitable for crit builds as well.
Useful words, thank you. Spark+Fireball seems to where to go for critting.
Concept is interesting, but yes, with both their cooldown reduction and enchantment nerfed, that build is much less effective now. I tried to spec Ice Blades to test them after changes and their cooldown reduction was barely noticeable. I think Blizzard overnerfed both their cooldown (not necessary cooldown reduction that can scale out of control with multiple blades, but base cooldown itself) and their enchantment and could tune the nerfs down a bit to keep this build competitive. If cooldown reduction for non-Ice Blades skills would prove to be too minor, they could buff it as well.